Legacy Admits

Daniel Hemel of the Harvard Crimson reviews "The Price of Admissions: How America�s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges�and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates" by Daniel Golden. Hemel, who is not a legacy, defends preferential treatment for alums and the wealthy. An excerpt:

For instance, in 1996, Harvard admitted an applicant named Anne Chandler Bass �in the hope of favors yet to come� from her father, a Yale-educated oil magnate. When Anne Chandler Bass graduated in 2000, her father donated $7 million to Harvard�a gift that now pays the salary of Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel. (The delicious irony�which goes unmentioned by Golden�is that this apparently-unjust admissions break is the source of the funding that facilitates Sandel�s wildly-popular course �Justice.�)